Gambit, David Hagberg [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

Hammond came out of the shower, a towel around his waist. Susan was in the sitting room in a bra and panties sipping champagne, her makeup already done.

“Do you think it’ll happen tonight?” she asked.

He didn’t have to ask what she meant. “I don’t know, but I hope so. I want it to be over and done with.”

“Me, too,” Susan said, and she was a lot more subdued than she usually was.

Hammond thought that she was frightened. He went across to her and kissed the nape of her neck.

She leaned back against him. “Let’s get the hell out of here and go home.”

“When it’s over.”

“Now. Call the crew and have them prep the plane. We can pack up and leave. Hell, we can just get out of here with the clothes on our backs; the hotel will send our stuff to us, or burn it for all I give a shit.”

Hammond sat down across from her. “I want this to be over with as much as you do, because our lives are on hold until it is.”

“Walk away from it, Tom.”

“I can’t.”

“Because of your deal with the Russians, or because you still want this fucking thing to happen?”

“Both.”

“You’re out of your mind. We don’t need more money, and this is just a goddamned game. Stupid.”

She was right, of course. He’d known it from the moment he’d learned that the first attempt to kill McGarvey had failed. And yet in a perverse way, he’d been glad that McGarvey had won that round and the next two. It was what he’d wanted from the beginning, though after each failure, he’d become truly afraid for his own life. As if he’d actually gone mano a mano with the man himself.

He’d read somewhere that after a man had done some ridiculously impossible feat—like scaling Mount Everest or crossing an ocean in a canoe—he would look back as the adrenaline faded and think about doing the next impossible thing. The rush was almost sexual.

It was almost the same with this thing, and he’d been willing to lose the first few rounds, lose a few pieces to gain the bigger prize. A gambit play.

And just now, he was close.

The Russian phone lying on the dresser in the bedroom chimed, and Hammond got up to answer it.

“The operation is in the works for tonight,” Tarasov said. “I want you two to stay where you are, act normally.”

“We’re going to the casino and then dinner afterward.”

“Perfect. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

“You won’t have to make the call; it’ll be all over the news.”

“Yes, and then you’ll have to get to work on our deal,” Tarasov said. “I don’t give a shit about McGarvey; I never have. He’s your game. This is just quid pro quo.”

“There’ll have to be a delay. At least a month to let the hue and cry die down.”

“We want you to start immediately.”

“You’re not listening. The goddamned FBI is already on my case. If all of a sudden I start working on a deal for Gazprom, the CIA is bound to pick up on it. McGarvey is no friend of Putin’s, and the connection will be made.”

“I don’t care.”

“What the fuck do you mean, you don’t care? Killing a former CIA director is a big deal, bigger if it’s traced to you guys. And it’s a Spetsnaz team who’ll be doing the shooting. How obvious can you get?”

“They have been dishonorably discharged and kicked out of Russia, their families arrested. It was a rogue operation.”

“A Russian operation.”

“No, a Hammond operation done out of some insane sense of spite for a deal gone wrong,” Tarasov said.

SIXTY-THREE

Pete had dark jeans, but McGarvey had to give her one of his black polo shirts, which was so ridiculously large she had to tuck it in her waistband. “I’m not going to win any fashion parade looking like this,” she said on the way out of the house and up to the peak of the hill.

The sun was low on the horizon toward the interior of the island, and McGarvey had wanted to take a look from the highest point on the peninsula before dark and pick the likely path their attackers would take, and from that figure out a defense that made sense.

The late-afternoon ferry from the mainland had come and gone an hour ago, and occasionally, a bit of music drifted across the bay from the town. That had been drowned out a couple of minutes ago by a helicopter coming in from the northwest.

“Tourists anxious for a head start,” Pete said.

“I’m not sure,” McGarvey said, half to himself.

The ground was rocky and in most places covered with a dense scrub brush while at other places almost bare. Here and there were larger boulders, some of them big enough to hide behind. Light brown rock outcroppings fell down the side of the hills in waves like broad stationary waterfalls.

“Not sure about what?”

“It hasn’t headed back.”

“Maybe the pilot needs a little R&R and decided to stay for the night.”

“Maybe,” McGarvey said, but he was skeptical. He’d learned from long experience that anomalies were often the things that rose up and bit you in the ass if you didn’t pay attention.

“Call Otto,” Pete suggested.

“Let’s do our walk around first.”

They stopped at the highest point. Off to the east, the big island of Paros with the smaller island of Antiparos in front of it were shrouded in a distant blue haze as if they were another universe away. Just at this moment, there were no boats under way in any direction and only a dozen or two anchored in the harbor.

Up here, they were totally alone, and Pete got something of that from him. “Okay, now I’m getting really spooked,” she said. “Talk to me.”

“There are only two ways for someone to get to us—from the sea or from the air. It’d be a tough climb up the side of the hill, even using the old mine buildings as a cover, and there’d be too many